Media service companies maintain media contact databases (“MCDs”) containing thousands of media sites in the US and Canada, including daily and weekly newspapers, magazines, radio stations, TV stations and internet sites, including blogs. The MCDs provide extensive contact information on each media site, such as address, telephone, fax, email, station format and call letters (broadcast media) data.
In addition, MCDs contain data relating to every journalist (approximating 250,000-350,000 journalists) at each of these media sites that has editorial responsibilities including the ability and responsibility to generate independent content. Thus, for example, advertising directors are typically not included in an MCD whereas all reporters, newscasters and bloggers are included in the database. The MCD contains all relevant contact information on each journalist and blogger, including address, telephone, fax and email, as well as the individual's preferred method of receiving press releases (mail, fax or email). Additionally, the MCD also contains each journalist's or blogger's “beat,” or the individual's subject/content area of responsibility. Beats include such titles as News, Features, Sports, Business, Entertainment, Technology, etc.
Public relations professionals use the MCD on behalf of their clients to identify individual journalists or bloggers that might be most receptive to writing an article on the client. A toy company, for example, might retain a public relations professional to promote the release of a new toy. Typically, the public relations professional would first draft a press release announcing the new toy. The public relations professional would then utilize the MCD to generate a list of journalists or bloggers who would be sent a press release, and maybe even a product sample.
The MCD contains a search facility that generates media contact lists according to defined search parameters, including media type, geography and beat. In the above example, the public relations professional might draft a release targeted to business editors and the trade press. The release would discuss the importance of this new toy to the company's product line and perhaps how this new toy extends the company's lead in a segment over its competitors. The public relations professional would then develop a media list consisting of business editors at the major daily newspapers, trade magazines and the major broadcast business shows. Depending on the search criteria, this list might include between 10 to 10,000 journalists. The public relations professional would then try to refine the list by accessing “pitching tips,” or notes that subjectively describe a journalist's primary area of interest. Pitching tips are available through commercial providers and many public relations professionals also maintain a proprietary compilation of pitching tips.
These pitching tips, however, are typically subjective, often out-of-date, and never available for more than a handful of journalists. Accordingly, refining the list generated through the MCD search is often subjective and tedious.
Systems widely available today allow the public relations professional to upload the press release into an online application, and an integrated distribution capability distributes the release to every member of the media list according to the preferred method of receipt.
The current methods of targeting journalists and/or bloggers utilizing beat or pitching tips are crude and tedious. Neither method works very well or efficiently. For example, many of the business reporters targeted above may be inappropriate recipients of the press release (and product sample). A journalist covering currency trading in Asia (obviously inappropriate) would be labeled a business reporter in the MCD, just as a journalist covering consumer product companies (more appropriate) would be labeled a business reporter in the MCD. Incorrect targeting entails substantial costs. Product samples sent awry are clearly a waste of money. But, time spent by public relations professionals pitching stories to journalists “off beat” wastes values time and effort. Moreover, bloggers often react adversely to misdirected press releases. In fact, at times bloggers have taken aim in their blogs at the public relations professional that sent the misdirected press release and have even unfairly criticized the company issuing the press release. Conversely, pitches that can be accurately targeted would be expected to produce a better result (more coverage in the press) at a lower cost.
Another problem encountered in the prior art is the time consuming and expensive problem of maintaining the currency and accuracy of the MCD. The MCD is a large, complex database typically consisting of over 250,000-350,000 entries, and each entry entails numerous data elements (name, address, etc.). The MCD, therefore, consists of millions of data elements that must be maintained and updated continuously.
The MCD requires constant updating. Journalists are continuously switching jobs and beats. Media sites (especially magazines and blogs) are continuously launched and closed. And both, media sites and journalists have proven unresponsive to potentially more economic, but impersonal, means (email, direct mail) of verifying relevant MCD data.
The currency and accuracy of the MCD has proven the key to customer satisfaction. Telemarketing has proven, and is currently, the only viable method of maintaining the currency of the MCD. Accordingly, companies that endeavor to maintain a media contact database expend significant sums on personally telephoning every media site and every journalist in the MCD to verify database elements.
But, telemarketing entails practical limits on the quality of the MCD. For instance, it is not possible to update the MCD daily. Even if it were possible to make 350,000 phone calls in one day, journalists would be extremely irritated after the first couple of days. MCD data, however, does change daily (on any given day, journalists change jobs, beats, or may die; media sites change addresses or close). The net result is that every day the MCD is out-of-date, and any updating effort is too little, too late.
One current industry approach is to segment media outlets. So-called “Tier I” sites and journalists are updated (personally contacted by telemarketers) more often than those in “Tier II or III.” As an example, a Tier I journalist might be updated six times a year; a Tier II journalist might be updated several times a year. But the tiers are typically constructed based upon the prominence of the media site. The New York Times, and its journalists, are updated far more frequently than the Kenosha Express. This approach, however, makes no sense to the user that wishes to contact the Kenosha Express, and who wants accurate data today regardless of the relative prominence of the newspaper.